Manna in the Ruins

Jim McDermott

Today’s reflection is from Jim McDermott, who is a freelance writer in New York.

Today’s liturgical readings for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time are available here.

During Lent I started going back to church after some time away. I’ve learned over the years that sometimes when I’m avoiding Mass it’s because there’s something there that I don’t want to deal with, some pain or hurt or maybe truth that is waiting for me.

The first couple of weeks held a couple of happy surprises—moments in the Mass that usually really speak to me but that I had forgotten about. I don’t know what it is exactly, but the presentation of the gifts, the lifting up of cup and paten always brings me a lot of relief.

Eventually, though, the territory got rougher: narcissistic homilies, music choices that didn’t seem interested in what the community could sing or was there for. Malaise and contempt began to set in.

Then one Sunday evening at Mass as all of those problems started to rear their heads yet again, I noticed something in the church: a stained-glass window. There was nothing unusual about it. It was your standard colorful mosaic of a saint. I just found it pretty. And it got me looking around and noticing other things in the church: the way the sunlight fell across the room; the looks on certain people’s faces; the fresco on the ceiling.

Suddenly it was like there were two of me: the adult who felt trapped in his seat, getting more and more frustrated; and the child who was happily taking things in, completely oblivious to what the adults were doing. It was kind of a revelation to discover that other part of me, to remember I have a whole other way of engaging with God in church that can be quite nourishing even if I am finding some things going on to be upsetting.

In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus saying he is “the bread that came down from Heaven.” It was a shocking claim to be making at the time, one of many that outraged religious people so much they actually wanted to see Jesus dead. Today I think we more often struggle with the opposite problem of Jesus’ words being so familiar that they don’t mean all that much of anything–or they seem so totally contrary to our lived experience of church, the hostility that we often find there or the anxiety that we who are queer feel in going to Mass or dealing with other religious people—how will we be treated? how will we be talked about?—that Jesus’ self-description of himself as offering us sustenance seems like it’s representing some other distant reality.

But lately I’m wondering whether even in the midst of the anxiety or frustration we might sometimes feel at church it’s still possible for us to experience the nourishment offered by Jesus on a Sunday. And a closer reading of what Jesus said suggests maybe I’ve been wrong to assume it’s one or the other. “The bread that came down from Heaven” is an allusion to the manna that God provided for the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert (which they did for 40 years). The promise that Jesus is offering is not to feed us when we’re sitting pretty at a friend’s feast, but precisely when we’re out there on our own wondering where are we and what are we doing.

People sometimes complain about the form of the Eucharistic host. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and it hardly looks like real bread at all. But that form is intentional. It’s supposed to remind us of the manna, and remind us of the specific promise that Jesus makes to us, not to be there just in times of plenty but in hardship, when we’re in need.

I want the church to change. I want us to feel welcome and safe. I want for us not to be treated as convenient scapegoats or unwell, but as blessing, as beloved family. But even as I struggle with the fact that we’re not there yet, nowhere close, can I still access the child inside me, who has such a different point of view on things, who can be delighted by the way the gold leaf glows in a fresco, the flickerdance of the flames in the votive candles, the way that the lector tells the story of Elijah in the desert?

Might there still be a meal waiting for us even in this desert?

—Jim McDermott, August 11, 2024